Locust Abortion Technician cover

Locust Abortion Technician

Released

The Butthole Surfers’ third album is split nearly 50-50 between goofy tape/noise experiments (“Kuntz,” “Weber,” “Hay”) and surprisingly heavy rock songs (“Sweat Loaf,” built on the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” the imitation thrash metal of “The O-Men,” and most amazingly, “Human Cannonball,” a cranked-up arena anthem with clearly audible — if still nonsensical — vocals and a massive, pounding beat). Two versions of the hellish stoner blues “Graveyard” bracket the album, and it ends with the nightmarish “22 Going On 23,” a psychedelic sludge jam introduced by a tape of a woman revealing herself (falsely) to a call-in radio show as the victim of sexual abuse.

Phil Freeman

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